Resignation gambit will cost Kent

Published 5:30 am, Thursday, June 4, 2009

Convicted justice obstructor Judge Sam Kent (yes, he is still, officially “the Honorable”) seems to have miscalculated in submitting his resignation from the bench, effective a year from now,

He was hoping to collect his $174,000 annual salary well into his 33-month federal prison term, while staving off impeachment.

“There’s no reason for going forward, now that Kent has notified the president of his unconditional resignation,” Kent’s lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, told the Houston Chronicle.

But Kent’s latest attempt to manipulate the system seems more likely to actually cost him money.

The reason is that it appears to have motivated Congress to rev up its typically laconic pace of impeaching judges.

Kent has jumped in line ahead of Louisiana federal Judge Thomas Porteous, who was unanimously recommended for impeachment a year ago by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and a panel of judges that had investigated him. Porteous has admitted to taking cash from lawyers who practiced in his court and to bankruptcy fraud, but like Kent he continues to draw his salary while being suspended from the bench.

A task force of the House Judiciary Committee originally appointed to investigate Porteous took testimony Wednesday regarding Kent, something they have yet to do regarding Porteous.

By submitting his letter of resignation to President Barack Obama on the eve of Wednesday’s hearing, Kent has only intensified the interest in impeaching him. Under the Constitution, the only way a federal judge’s salary can be stopped is by impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate.

“Judge Kent and his lawyer are banking on the fact that impeachments take time, literally,” U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith of San Antonio, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday. “Judge Kent receives $465 of his taxpayer-funded salary every day he remains in office.

“We are here today to put an end to Judge Kent’s abuse of authority and exploitation of American taxpayers,” he continued. “Allowing Judge Kent to remain on the bench and retain a taxpayer-funded salary is an affront to the very idea of justice that Judge Kent once swore to uphold.”

‘You gotta be kidding!’

A committee staffer, speaking on background, said of Kent’s resignation letter: “We looked at it and said, You gotta be kidding! A year is actually a reasonable time to be impeached, but it’s given us fire in our belly to get it done quickly.”

Staffers were also aware that Kent could rescind his resignation offer at any time, setting up the possibility that a day before the agreed time he could say, “I changed my mind. Go ahead and impeach me.”

DeGuerin warned that impeaching Kent “is going to be brutal, it’s going to be ugly and it’s going to be nasty.”

It’s an empty threat. His client has already admitted in court that he sexually abused his female employees. Kent can hardly renew earlier public bluster that he was going to bring in “a horde of witnesses” against his accusers.

But DeGuerin’s words were well chosen. Brutal, ugly and nasty precisely describes what Kent did to his secretary, his case manager and quite possibly to other employees.